


a different kind of paradise

by eulyhne_syios



Category: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Angst with a happyish ending..., Before Snowman was Snowman, Crake deserved better, Crake wants to experiment with Jimmy, Drug-Induced Sex, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hallucinations, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, They all deserved better, but still, the lack of fanfics about them is hurting me, there's no way their relationship could ever end well anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eulyhne_syios/pseuds/eulyhne_syios
Summary: Sometimes Crake daydreams of a paradise. One day, he lets Jimmy take him there.





	1. Arachnid (the first time)

**Author's Note:**

> So I read Oryx and Crake last summer for English class and I did not expect it but it was so beautiful. I wish there were more fanfics about it, there's a lot of things to be explored in a work like that. Anyways, I shipped Crake and pre-Snowman (Jimmy) and my friends don't get it. Neither does most of the Internet apparently lol
> 
> So I wanted to explore their past relationship a bit more here. None of these things are canon obviously but it's always interesting to wonder what it would have been like if they went down that route... :)

Crake never dreams. That's why he screams, always screams at night, and when he isn't screaming he's breathing, trembling from the spiders crawling underneath his skin. Sometimes there are so many of them, he feels like he wants to cut open his arm and reach in to pick them out. Sometimes he barely feels them at all. Crake knows they're not actually there. But knowing is different from feeling. When the feeling comes, it doesn't matter whether they are real or not. He is completely trapped in the world inside the feeling and the spiders become more real than the skin on his face, the nails on his fingers, the veins in his neck.

Crake feels their tiny, needle-like legs burrowing deep into his throat and he suddenly feels sick, turns over on the bed and tries to hurl but only a thin line of saliva hangs from his lip. He still feels the tremors course through his slender frame, and his arms wobble against his own weight, and slowly, he lies back down again.

On the other side of the bed, Jimmy is asleep, facing him. His face reminds Crake not of a person but of a place, a quiet room, muted lamps washing the walls in a gentle amber light, the smell of old books mixed with the formaldehyde of foolish daydreams. The reading room. Crake remembers it well. It wasn't a real place, just a small, hushed corner in his mind, one of the few brightened spaces left. He went there often when he was little. It helped keep the spiders away.

In the dark, Crake couldn't see the colour of Jimmy’s hair, but he could still see how soft it was, some of the fine brown strands hanging lazily over his nose. Crake doesn't reach over and brush them away, doesn't dare touch him. He had always been so sure of everything, all there ever was and ever would be, he thought he knew, but this, this, if Crake were to graze his fingers across Jimmy’s quiet, dreaming face, he didn't know what would happen. Would his fingers slip into paralysis and lay there like newly fallen snow? Or would they curiously wander further and play with the hollows of his throat? Only the devil knew.

But Crake doesn't have to wait, not for long. Jimmy, still asleep, then exhales loudly and his arm shifts, falling languidly right by the side of Crake’s face. His fingers just barely meet his lips. Crake doesn't know how he expected Jimmy’s skin to feel like, but it paralyzed him for several moments, he didn't even breathe, fearing it might wake him up.

Jimmy's fingers move so that his first two have slightly embedded themselves in Crake’s mouth. They slide in further and rest gently against his tongue. Crake doesn't know how to describe the beautifully painful feeling that began to spread its way between his thighs. It was different from the spiders. Warmer.

He was close enough that he could smell Jimmy's breath. It still carried a hint of whiskey from their evening of recounting past lives. Life before Watson-Crick. Before Martha Graham. Back to the familiar walls of HelthWyzer, it's sounds and smells, blurred and muffled like they were underwater.

Jimmy murmurs in his sleep and the words are a tangled, knotted mess, mere particles of dreamspeak. Was he still drunk? Going through the motions of premature hangover? Wherever the alcohol was taking him, it was a happier place than where Crake was right now.

He wanted to go there. Crake wanted to dream. He sometimes thinks that he used to, maybe when he was really, really young. Maybe when the world felt like it was still wondrous and filled with purpose, but the kind that was empty and still waiting for its realization. Back when there still was hope for another way, a different road. But he doesn't trust his memories. That's the first thing and really, the only thing that he ever learned from his parents.

Crake tries to close his eyes again but he keeps seeing dark figures in the room, the chairs strewn out and clothes he hung in a half open closet morph into moving shadows. One of them drifts closer to loom over him, deep, depthless eyes peering into his, almost as if they were trying to extract the green out of his irises.

The spiders were coming back.

Crake covers his face but they eat through his eyelids and crawl inside his brain. He feels them enter through his ears, his nose, his mouth. They start climbing down his throat again and when they latch themselves onto his intestines and begin draining his blood, he can't take it anymore. Silently, he cries as he listens to the sounds of what sounds like cars outside.

 

* * *

When Crake screams for a second time, Jimmy is awake. It's really very early in the morning, but it's so dark outside no one really knows the difference. It's very quiet. The world, as it is oft described, was still asleep.

Jimmy swallows the taste of old, bitter alcohol and blinks to the sight of Crake, or more specifically, the veins and muscles of Crake's neck writhing and pulsating like worms. His eyes move higher and he sees the heaves of breath fall out of his trembling mouth, the sound reminding him of a screen door being repeatedly swung open and closed. He could see the dampness of Crake's eyelashes.

He rolls out of bed and leaves the room.

Crake is left confused and desolate. Did Jimmy know what happened that night? Had he been awake when his fingers had found their way between his lips? What sort of things were Jimmy dreaming or thinking about when that strange event happened? Did it scare him? Did it...disgust him?

Jimmy returns with a glass and a yellow fruit. Between his first two fingers is a small knife.

He sits down and places the glass onto the counter where there's a lamp and a thin, wrinkled novel.

“I'm turning on the light,” Jimmy warns, voice still thick with sleep. “-I'm not really good at this and I'm never going to do this shit again if I lose a finger…”

Jimmy starts to peel the mango and Crake laughs when he ends up peeling off more flesh than skin. He glares at him, but it's a friendly glare, an exasperated but light-hearted grimace.

When he's finally done, the mango is horribly angular. Jimmy hands it over to Crake and starts gnawing disappointedly at the flesh behind the mango peels, quietly embarrassed at his lack of knife skills. Crake finds Jimmy's sulking face vastly amusing and starts laughing again. Bits of mango spatter onto Jimmy's pajama bottoms and he picks them up gingerly and flicks them into Crake’s invisible trash can. He sweeps them under the bed with his sock feet. Crake doesn't care. He's still laughing.

Jimmy finds it irritating and tries to get him to stop laughing. First he covers Crake’s mouth with his hands, but the sounds still trickle out. He pushes a pillow on his face but Crake is surprisingly strong and flings it off and it bounces off the edge of the bed. Jimmy tries to stuff Crake's face with mango peels. Laughing even harder, they tumble out of his mouth and he falls back onto the bed, and not noticing their legs are sort of tangled together, Jimmy falls down with him.

For a minute, they just lay there, side by side. Crake looks at him inquisitively and Jimmy is temporarily distracted by the green of his eyes and doesn't notice himself moving closer. When Crake closes his eyes, Jimmy knows he's moved too close. He waits for the moment to end, but it hangs there like their breaths and when Crake's eyes reopen, Jimmy knows the moment has probably passed now, so he tells himself he should stop, go wash his face with cold water and wake up from this daydream.

But he doesn't care. Jimmy moves in and leaves a quiet, but sundering kiss, gives him a taste, a remnant, a splinter and Crake feels them all at once. He winces against the feeling of his lips against his, so soft and insistent, and Crake tastes a certain sweetness to them, not from the mango, different, stranger, an abstraction from that simple, knowable flavour. The taste of kissing was unknowable, like looking into the deep ocean water in the middle of the night and reaching a hand down, watching it disappear and not wondering about what sort of things could drag you under.

It was a strange, and theoretically foul thing to exchange saliva with another human being but somehow at the moment, it felt oddly and incredibly pleasurable. Crake had thought that maybe this was his mind playing tricks on him, but kissing Jimmy felt really good and his sweet, sticky fingers moved down his waist and gently made him want to do more things, things that didn't involve all those layers of clothing between them.

Jimmy responded by coaxing Crake's mouth open with his tongue until they were kissing, really kissing now, the way lovers did, softly moaning, needing. Jimmy starts to lick and savour the aftertaste of mango from the inside of his mouth and Crake lets him, more than lets him, his own fingers stringing their way in Jimmy's soft brown hair and he yanks at it so he can kiss him harder, feeling strange when he feels good from hearing Jimmy let out short gasps of pain. But he makes sure it doesn't hurt too much. He wants Jimmy to have fun too.

Jimmy soon gets used to it and pushes Crake onto the bed, and they're still at it, still making out and both of them know it's not love, it was just two horny teenagers with a few hours before daybreak. They knew they didn't actually want each other. But knowing is different from feeling. Crake feels like he wants it, really wants it and Jimmy wasn't making it any easier with the way he was treating him, as if they were in love, as if everything was that fucking simple and letting his lips leave a trail of warm, wet kisses down his jaw, reaching a hand under his shirt and pulling it over his head and suddenly Crake's body was exposed down to the light dusting of hair over his lower abdomen and he exhales sharply when Jimmy moves down to kiss him there.

When he starts to run his tongue beyond Crake's torso, Crake finds his hips convulsing on their own and it becomes harder to swallow in his moans and leak out of his mouth bit by bit until the raw, broken sounds are all that he can hear. Jimmy loves the sound of it, the soft staccato almost melodic, the music from a different world.

He reaches between them and feels Crake's passions under his fingers, hears him moan, changing pitch, higher, breathier, tears in his eyes.

“...”

“What?” Crake pants, trying to hear what Jimmy's saying.

“...”

But his voice is all muffled and strange like it was moving through a vacuum and now that Crake looked carefully, Jimmy's face was changing, his body morphing into something else, someone else, his hair darkening to black and growing long, his waist becoming narrow and smooth, his limbs, the palest shade of yellow, too slender to be his.

She laughs at him, at his secret infatuation. Oryx tugs the black blindfold off completely as the last traces of the drugs wore off. Crake sees it’s her, knows it’s her but can't help feeling that just for a moment he was almost there. Almost in paradise.

“You're not very good at imitating him…” Crake muttered, irritably, mad at no one in particular.

“Doesn't matter,” She smiled, still satisfied with herself. “-you still believed for one night,”

“Yes, and under the influence of heavy hallucinogens I had to concoct out of my own wallet for some stupid experiment,”

She laughed again, eyes amused.

“Your idea, Crake, always like this. I come, you pay. You know that.”

“He wouldn't touch me like that,” Crake protested quietly, ignoring her words.

“And how would he be like, Crake?”

“He would be...awkward, rushed, shy but passionate…” Crake mused thoughtfully. “-he wouldn't know where to put his hands, or his mouth, so he would try to move them everywhere at once and he'd make a mess of everything…”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes. Yes, I think I would,”

“Do you want me to love you like that?” She offered, entertained.

“No. I want you to love me like you always do.” Crake paused. “-you do love me, right?”

Oryx laughs her soft, tinkling laugh, gets on his lap and starts to touch him again.

“Sure,” She smiled, kissing him reassuringly. “I can do that,”

He thinks she doesn't understand.

Then she stops for a moment and looks at him curiously.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, sweetheart,”

“When you touch yourself, do you imagine him on you?”

Crake is silent for several minutes and Oryx almost thinks she asked the wrong question, thinks he might get mad and hit her. But then Crake just sighs and looks past her, at the early sunlight casting bright red squares against his opposite wall.

“No.” He answered. “-only sometimes.”

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Prototype (the second time)

“Holy _fucking_ shit…” Crake muttered anxiously under his breath.

Jimmy watched as he practically flipped his room upside down, tossing files all over the place as he slammed the filing cabinets, scattering his papers and miscellaneous items every which way. Normally so composed, this was a fascinating and vastly entertaining sight.

“What's wrong?”

He jerked his sweat streaked face towards him.

“What do you mean ‘what's wrong’? I lost my fucking pills.”

Jimmy coughed in his chuckle. Crake gave him a withering glance.

“It's not funny, Jimmy. This is all my years of research going down the fucking toilet…” He breathed, mortified beyond belief.

Jimmy tried to bite down his amused grin.

“How many times are you gonna say ‘fucking’? Next thing you know, you're gonna tell me your ‘fucking’ pills are actually for fucking…”

Crake drops his files on the desk, making a small but resounding slap as his eyebrows rise and his mouth slowly make a thin line.

“Actually,” He replied, saying no more.

Jimmy stared at him in utter amazement.

“Seriously? Fuck, that's pretty awesome. Hey, is it like a really _hard_ Viagra?”

“Screw you, Jimmy…” Crake muttered, still rummaging through the same places for the third time.

Then he pulled out a small plastic container filled with tiny coloured tablets.

He examined it carefully and looked a little disappointed.

“Found your ‘fucking pills’?”

“Nah, these are more like the prototypes. They're less potent and don't even contain the same substances in my finalized product...Actually, that might not be too bad considering our situation…”

Jimmy’s amused expression disappeared and turned into suspicion.

“Wait. What is _our_ situation…?”

Crake looked at him with seemingly innocent expectancy.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you value your life…?”

Jimmy was flabbergasted.

“What the _fuck_ kinda question is that? Were you planning to test your hyper-concentrated Viagra shit on me…?!”

“Well, when you put it that way-

“Screw you, Crake, I'm not going to risk my life for some kind of dumb experiment just for a good fuck-

“-A _great_ fuck

“-Okay, a great fuck--

“-Maybe even a _fantastic_ fuck

Jimmy was now the one to give a withering glance.

“Okay, who can I possibly be fucking for it to be _fantastic_ -

Crake looked to the side and let his eyes slowly move back to meet his.

Jimmy looked at him in disbelief.

“You're kidding right?”

Crake was silent.

“Crake, I mean maybe I never made it clear to you before but,” Jimmy tried. “-I’m not _gay_ …”

“I know. Me neither,” He replied calmly.

“So…”

“So…?”

“Why would you want to fuck me...?”

Crake crossed his arms and just looked at him like a math teacher who wanted the student to think just a little bit harder.

Realization hit him hard and Jimmy narrowed his eyes.

“You want to test how powerful your shitty Viagra-

“-Jimmy, if you really don't want to do it, I can find someone else…”

He looked at him in mock astonishment.

“And who did you have in mind? Are you really just going to let _any_ guy fuck you? What if you contract some kind of fucked up disease that we never got protected against?”

Crake took a long look at him, eyebrows raised.

“How do I know _you_ don't have some fucked up disease that we never got protected against?”

Jimmy stepped over and flopped down onto Crake's bed.

“You don't, genius. Still wanna fuck me?” He smirked, absently tossing his ass from side to side.

“I mean, if you're really okay with it,”

Jimmy shrugged and pursed his lips.

“College is where you experiment and shit, right? Of course, your version of experimentation is a little too literal for that definition…”

Crake peered him with a surgeon’s gaze.

“Jimmy, are you slightly _high_...?”

“Hmm, a little more than slightly…”

“Well then we can't fuck until you've got both your feet back on the ground.”

“I might change my mind after I get it back,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Yeah, well, I don't know what sort of whack side effects you're gonna get if you combine my ‘shitty Viagra ripoff’ with whatever shit you've been smoking,”

“Hmm, good point,”

Crake looked him over again and then suddenly strolled out of the room. Jimmy heard the sound of him rummaging through cupboards again and he soon returned with a carving knife. Upon seeing the instrument, Jimmy sat straight up on the mattress, his back pressed tight against the wall.

“Whoa, whoa, _whoa_ -

“Relax, I just want to make a blood pact-

“What are we- back in the _Middle Ages_ -

“Just make a tiny cut on your hand and I'll do the same thing and then we'll- I don't know, _link pinkies,_ or whatever they do nowadays…” Crake sighed impatiently.

“Crake, you fucking…” Jimmy muttered, slicing his palm, barely wincing. He was definitely more than a little high, he could hardly feel the sting.

Taking the knife from his fingers, Crake made a similar cut over his palm and Jimmy looked at him funny when he tried to link their pinkies.

“Just hold my hand, idiot,” Jimmy muttered, interlocking their fingers together.

When their open cuts touched, he gasped as the strangest sensation came over him, a bizarre mixture of pain, numbness and something almost like pleasure. It was like that feeling when you ran your hand under hot water for so long it started to feel cold instead.

Crake looked over at Jimmy to check his reaction. Jimmy looked at him and snickered.

“I think I just came.” He joked mockingly.

“You're such an asshole when you're high,” Crake mutters, falling back onto the bed and flipping over so he was at face level with him.

“And you're just an asshole in general,” Jimmy laughed in return, still lying on his stomach.

Then he turns to look at Crake's parted lips and closes his mouth over them.

There's nothing particularly special about the kiss, it wasn't sweet, or rough or even sexy. It was bare, simple and ordinary.

But then Jimmy pulls back and Crake sees it.

Sees it in his eyes. That brief flash of vulnerability, hesitation. That even briefer flash of something that didn't quite look like an emotion, but a familiar combination of emotions that Crake couldn't quite place.

It was like the kiss washed off the edge that the drugs had given him and now Jimmy was back to his former self, a little less cruel, and maybe a little less honest. Or maybe more honest. Truth was a difficult thing to pin down.

Jimmy just sort of looked down at the pattern on the sheets, refusing to meet his eyes. He began to pick at invisible lint under his fingernails and breathes shallow through his nostrils. His mouth would open to attempt to form a word and then it would twist closed, looking uncomfortable.

“Jimmy,”

He ignores him.

“ _Jimmy_ ,” Crake demanded.

He turns to face and Crake is taken aback at the way he looks.

For the most part, Jimmy was doing a good job of hiding his expression but Crake could still see the faintest, the barest colour on his cheeks. The look of irritation in his eyes gave it away and he saw that Jimmy was, in fact, quite embarrassed about something. He looked away quickly and exhaled sharply.

“Jimmy, I really don't get it. What's the frickin' problem?”

He took a pillow and smushed it into his face so hard Crake thought Jimmy would have trouble breathing.

“Have you ever kissed anyone, Crake?” Jimmy's voice emanated from under the pillow, comically squished and nasally.

“Not that I can remember,” He replied easily.

“Me neither,”

Crake gives a derisive laugh of disbelief.

“What about all those girls you said you fucked, back in Martha Graham?”

“That's just it. I fucked them. I never said I kissed them.”

“Huh,” Crake mutters, mildly fascinated.

“So, I was your first kiss?” Crake continues. “-how was it?”

“It wasn't really anything. It just happened and then it ended, I guess.”

“Painfully ordinary,”

“Mmm,” Jimmy agreed.

“Was it unpleasant?”

“No. But I didn't really feel anything from it. Sorry,”

Crake shrugged.

“Don't be. I didn't feel anything either. Then again, I don't really feel anything most of the time so maybe it's not your fault.”

“But that kiss was so boring though,” Jimmy confessed.

“I know,” Crake laughed. “-it was like, I don't know, two little rocks hitting each other after some dude kicks the ground in an attempt to be hip,”

“Hip?” Jimmy chuckled. “-how the heck does someone attempt to be hip by kicking some stupid rocks?”

“‘Cause he's a stupid fucking corknut,”

Jimmy looks at him and bursts out laughing. Crake grins and soon joins in. Soon the room is echoing with their wild, adolescent hollers and guffaws.

“Stupid fucking corknut!” Jimmy shouts at no one in particular. “-hey, you know who are stupid fucking corknuts?”

“Mmm, who?” Crake manages to ask.

“People who are good at kissing and actually _like_ kissing. Like, fuck them, just _fuck_ them, you know?”

Crake laughs in agreement and they continue naming people they think are stupid and lame and they laugh so hard their heads crash together, teeth knocking painfully into each other.

“Ow, fuck, Crake- that fucking hurts…” Jimmy mutters, rubbing his mouth.

“We’re really fucking terrible at kissing,” He laughs.

When their laughter dies down, Jimmy sits up and puts the pillows behind his back. He breathes a loud sigh and looks at Crake, still lying down. Then he grins and gets an idea.

“Hey. Wanna try something?”

Crake looks at him, interested.

“I’m going to try to kiss you really, really badly. Like I'm going to give you the worst kiss of your life. I want you to remember this and if it can't be good then it can't be boring either,”

Crake laughs with a hint of anxiety.

“You're not going to rip my lips off, are you?” He joked.

“No, nothing like that,” Jimmy laughed. “-I'm just going to do that thing in the movies where the guy uses too much tongue and spit is flying everywhere,”

“Alright, as long as I don't end up deepthroating your tongue, it's fine,”

“Good,” He grinned.

Crake closes his eyes, his dark lashes slightly fluttering, whether it was from fear or anticipation Jimmy did not know for sure. What he did know was that when Crake closed his eyes and he couldn't see the penetrating green of his irises, he looked softer, kinder. Crake was a very strange kind of beautiful.

He was still trying to figure out what kind of beautiful it was as he closed his own eyes and dove in for the worst kiss of his life. Crake opened his mouth on instinct and Jimmy shoved his tongue forcefully deep inside, trying to get saliva dripping all over Crake's jaw and Crake’s laughing like crazy as he kisses back just as enthusiastically, trying to get the saliva off his face and onto Jimmy's. It's not enough and Crake digs his fingers into Jimmy's hair to yank his face closer and then moves his hands down his ass to grab the backs of his thighs to pull Jimmy onto his lap. Jimmy laughs and lets his own hands to wander under Crake's shirt to grip his smooth abdomen and then roaming up to thumb his nipples.

Crake starts laughing and says it tickles. Jimmy returns the laugh and moves to leave slow, wet kisses down his neck, sucking and biting gently, running his tongue over again and again on the places he bit to soothe the reddened skin. He makes sure to kiss those places again afterwards and he makes them warm and sweet after he hears Crake's laughter morph into a sexy hitching of breath. He didn't know Crake was capable of it, that he could be like this and when Jimmy sees Crake's eyes, the green of his eyes so fresh and ardent, the lashes wet with passion, for a second he can't of anything, or anyone more beautiful.

Crake notices him staring and asks what's the matter.

“Your eyes,” Is all Jimmy can manage to say.

“What about them,”

“They're beautiful,” Jimmy answered without a hint of ice.

Crake doesn't know how to react, so he's frozen, silent. Then he gives him a wicked, teasing grin, bordering on delirium and places a sweet kiss behind his ear.

Jimmy gives a gasp of arousal, feels his face grow hot. He bites his lip and tugs questioningly at the edge of Crake's brandless black shirt and Crake nods. Jimmy pulls his shirt over his head and wastes no time to bury his face against the skin of Crake's ribs, playing with his tongue, lapping and sweeping the tip to draw squiggles and swirls over his stomach. He took note of the taste, slightly bitter, chemical with a strange warmth, almost sweet, hard to describe with the flavours of things he's already tasted in his life.

Then Jimmy notices the skin on Crake's chest is becoming flushed and his nipples have grown to a deep shade of pink. They rise and sink as Crake breathes, and Jimmy knows it's cliché as hell but he can't help it, he's mesmerized by the colour and closes his mouth over one and doesn't know what to do so he tries to do everything all at once, he kisses, he sucks, he licks until the nipple has become stiff and erect, pinching the other with enough pressure that it should be painful and when he hears Crake gasp for air he knows that his nipples aren't the only part of his body that's swollen and hard.

He peels off his own shirt and grabs Crake by the wrists to guide his hands down the curves of his torso, exhaling sharply when he feels how cold his palms are against his skin, shudders from strange pleasure as his left hand, still bleeding, leaves bright vermillion streaks down his body. He wonders if sex could be art as he steers Crake's hand down so he makes a mess of blood coloured highways running from the centre of his heaving chest into an array of forked roads and underpasses to just above his pulsing groin. He sees Crake regard his painted body with deep fascination.

Then he licks his lips and Crake moves in so he can sample the half-dried streaks with his tongue. He doesn't like the flavour but he starts to lick and trace the paths slower, careful in his movements, letting his tongue meander and veer perfectly along the faded strokes that suddenly seemed to run for miles. Crake lets his mouth move down, as his shy glossing of tongue becomes warm, deliberate kisses, wiping away the last of the blood on his body.

“All the roads have disappeared…” Jimmy breathed.

“You don't need them. They all lead back to me anyway,”

Jimmy hums in agreement and nuzzles Crake's neck, hearing the lovely wash of his laughter when his hair tickles him. He begins to kiss again and Crake takes hold of his face, gently, stopping him.

“Do you ever fall in love with the people you fuck?”

Jimmy looks to the side.

“No. Never. We try to complete ourselves with each other but it only works for one night. You can't finish your puzzle with her pieces. It just doesn't work that way,”

Crake sighs.

“You use too many metaphors, Jimmy,” 

“Well then, it's a good thing you're smart enough to figure them out,” He chuckles in return.

Crake ignores this. He looks at him carefully instead.

“So you're not in love with me, have never been in love with me,”

“No. Never,”

Crake pauses for a moment to think.

“Hmm. I guess I should be feeling something, but I don't. Maybe that's a good thing,”

Jimmy laughs at him sarcastically.

“You fucking bastard,” He chuckled. “-let me make you feel something then,” 

 

* * *

 Crake wakes up from the first dream of his life. There's a bitter taste in his mouth and he unfurls his hand to find pills, half-crushed in the heat of his palm. Heaving a sigh of disappointment, he realizes he would have to take the medication if he wanted to dream again. But these are only prototypes. He doesn't know if they were stable in the doses he was taking, or if they were really even safe at all. Was it worth the dreams? Was it worth the brief joy, the fleeting unraveling colours of his foolish, youthful imaginings? Was it worth the pain of waking up each morning realizing that's all they were? Nothing but useless, senseless dreams? He laughs hoarsely, shakes his head.

Running a hand through his tangled hair, he winces when he feels the strands cut sharply into his palm. He yanks his hand away and looks at it groggily, still blinking away the last winks of sleep. Knitting his eyebrows together, Crake looks confusedly at a dark jagged line across his palm. The scab was long dry but it hurt when he curled and uncurled his fingers. He wonders where he got it from.

Looking to the side, he sees a man with warm, messy brown hair asleep next to him, lying on his stomach. A few strands of hair cling to his forehead and cheeks. He's naked with his pale back exposed above the sheets, his skin still slightly reddened and laced with sweat. A faded rust coloured streak, still stark against his light skin, runs down the back of his shoulder to the near middle of his spine. He's breathing evenly, calmly, his face unmarred from the wrinkles of reality. 

For a second, Crake doesn't recognize him. He's a lot older now. They were both a lot older now. 

In his dream, they were only a few years out of college. 

The man blinks and peers at him. Smiles even. Crake thinks the drugs must be really strong for that to happen. For some reason that thought almost makes him sad.

He reaches over to touch Crake's lips with his fingers and moves in to bring his own lips to the base of Crake's neck. Jimmy breathes in his morning scent, bleary and thick with the dust of the ships that carried them into their dreams at night. He tries a kiss and laughs a small, muffled smirk when he feels Crake's pulse quicken in his throat. He hums and finds that he loves the feeling of his lips against Crake's skin. Somehow it felt natural, almost like breathing. More natural than anyone else he had ever been with.

"So," Jimmy mouthed into Crake's neck. "-did I make you feel something,"

Crake feels a strange but not unfamiliar smell in his nose. Astringent, hollow and completely sudden.

He feels tears fall from his eyes and roll down his jaw.

Then he feels Jimmy kiss them away and whisper his strange but soothing metaphors that he knows Crake secretly loves. He runs his hands in Jimmy's soft hair and pulls him up so they can kiss with their mouths.

Crake thinks he must still be dreaming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm not going to be able to write chapters for other stories until I complete this one, haha. Unfortunately, I haven't read the book in over a year, so my ideas of their characterizations are blurry and foggy imitations at best. I apologize if they don't seem to be in character at times. Maybe I'll reread the book this year and edit the chapters over the summer :)


	3. Clockwork (the last time)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets really smutty here :3 probably should have rated it E... It's all downhill (into hell) from here lol

They're outside now. Whatever that meant in this place. There wasn't really an outside. It was more like they were just a bit closer to it. Going to the Pleebs was always a health hazard and most times it wasn't worth it. It wasn't, this time either.

Crake knows that he has already built Paradise. He knows that although it is nowhere near perfect, it is far more perfect than anything that anyone has ever built. Or will build. He has made sure of that. There's a certain length that humanity can progress and afterwards there needs to be someone to cut the thread, unravel everything so it can begin all over again.

He knows Jimmy would never agree with him. It didn't matter. They rarely agreed with each other anyway. It was a wonder they could get along at all. He tries to think back to when they first met and he wonders if they were ever supposed to be friends. He wonders if any of this was supposed to happen.

Would he be where he is now if they'd never met?

Crake doesn't dwell on it too long and decides that he would have gotten here regardless of whoever the hell he'd met.

He laughs at the idea of God. The things that people could create when they were left on their own with nothing to do and nothing in their heads would always be something.

Jimmy looks out the window.

“Hey, is that real sunlight?” He joked.

Crake ignores him and turns the tiny plastic container of pills around in his fingers.

“How do we really know we’re going forward?” Jimmy tried again, changing the subject. “I mean, we have all these things but they're just worthless in the end, right?”

Crake looks up at him this time.

“What is the end, Jimmy?” He asked, half-sarcastically. “-you know what I think? I don't think there is an end. After we die, there will be something else to take over. It’s just a matter of time before we’re the dinosaurs,”

Jimmy laughs hollowly.

“But what's the point in knowing that things will continue when you won't be there anymore? Nobody actually gives a shit about the end of all things. We just care about the end of us.”

Crake was silent for a while. Then he looked at him carefully, but soon shifted his gaze back to the pills.

“Do you,” Crake asked absently. “-care about the end of us?”

Jimmy was confused for a second. Then he shrugged.

“I try not to think about death too much. I mean it's not exactly something we can do anything about,”

Crake sniffed, distant.

“You really don't know anything, Jimmy.”

“Oh, screw you, Crake. I bet you’ll feel fantastic when you live forever while the rest of the world fucking dies.”

“I never said that I wouldn't die. I'll die just like everyone else. I'm just saying that we should change our perspective. Maybe we shouldn't see it as death,”

Jimmy looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, did you suddenly meet _God_? Shit, you out of all people…”

“Don't be ridiculous. I didn't meet God,” Crake scoffed. “-God is dead, Jimmy. Our world doesn't even know him anymore, out of sight, out of mind and out of mind, out of existence.”

Jimmy paused.

“Are you saying everything we have ever experienced and everything that has ever happened around us was all in our heads?” He laughs, half-worried Crake was serious.

“I didn't just say that, Jimmy,” Crake replied. “-I know that.”

And that's when Jimmy turns to leave because now it was just an exercise of Crake’s ridiculously colossal ego. But then Crake grabs him by the arm, tells him to stop.

“Do you want to do it? For real this time?”

His voice has a new tone to it, genuinely curious and a little hesitant.

“You want us to commit sutti together, is that it?” Jimmy snickered, a bad taste in his mouth. “-I honestly don't know if you’re trying to be romantic or just fucking retarded,”

Crake glared at him.

“You know what I mean,”

Jimmy looks at him in disbelief. Where was the Crake that he remembered -the one who'd spout a myriad of scientific psychobabble to get a simple idea across, the one who loved his work more than any fleeting interest he had on a person- heck, he didn't even think about people the way regular people did, he thought of them as mere machinery to be controlled, repaired, remodelled and replaced when necessary.

Since when did he act so vulnerable -to Jimmy of all people…?

“And what do I get in return?” He asked cautiously.

“You get _me_ , corknut,” Crake said, rolling his eyes. “-haven't you always wanted that? To be superior than me in some sort of way?”

“You think I’ll enjoy it? Getting on top of you and seeing all of that completely under the mercy of my reckless libido?”

Crake just looked at him patiently.

And a few moments later, Jimmy sighed.

Of _course_ , he knew something was definitely going on, Crake was the kind of person who was always two or three steps ahead -why else would he have beaten him almost incessantly at chess -yet Jimmy found himself unable to resist his suddenly attractive offer, for reasons that he wasn't entirely comfortable with.

In the simplest terms, he liked the idea that Crake was finally giving him an opportunity to dominate him, no matter how absurd and seemingly trivial the subject matter appeared to be. Still, it made him feel uneasy, the way he thought he might enjoy it.

“There's a sadist in all of us,” Crake reassured him, grinning.

 

* * *

They're in another room now, and it's quieter, softer. It's late afternoon and the overhead lights imitate the muted glow of sunlight to a degree of near perfection. The blinds are half-closed, so the rays fall in faded bars against the bed, the sheets only slightly wrinkled. Crake tended to stay pretty still when he slept, even through his nightmarish dreamlessness. On the contrary, Jimmy often tossed and turned at night, always in the midst of traveling the endless fields of his existing ones. He dreamed in colour. He thinks it's normal.

Maybe Crake never moved from the fear as the darkness fell against his closed eyes. The fear gripped him by the jugular like a metal clamp while iron forceps pried his eyes open, to see the truth of what he has built. In the daylight, he can convince himself that what he has created is immaculate. Behind the scenes, he knows, he knows that his plan no matter how perfect would never be the true realization of the kingdom in his mind.

It frustrates him how someone so supposedly intellectually inferior to him as Jimmy could see through his blueprint, so seemingly flawless and logically sound. He goes to the trouble of establishing a perfect sales pitch and in one fell sentence Jimmy not only crumples the floor plan -he sends it straight into the trash bin. Sometimes he wonders if it would be better if he just killed him. But that thought only briefly crosses his mind before he discards it, shaking his head. He needs Jimmy to lead the Crakers. He's the only one who can do it.

Somehow Crake knows he himself won't be able to do it. Not after all that he had already done. His work had drained him, mentally, and it was blatantly visible on the outside too. He was getting thinner every day. His hair stayed dark and intact but that was from the anti-aging supplements that he had been taking. Courtesy of grief in the face of inevitable death, the wish to stop time. The human condition.

He knows Jimmy can see it too, the prominent joints in his fingers, the distinctive outline of his ribs against his black shirt beneath the clean, crisp lab coat. The pronounced hollows of his cheeks, the sharp jut of his Adam’s apple. He looks like death even though he stays youthful, a wildflower with rotting petals.

He has lost most of his muscle tone too -it's a wonder Oryx still lets him go down on her, without throwing up a little in her mouth. Now she, she is a true thing of beauty, an ethereal angel, whose his, all his. That's what he tells himself every time he tugs down the blinds and she tugs down his pants.

Crake knows she's sleeping with Jimmy. She sees him as ‘fun’, her own little boytoy, a silly but cute distraction when business was slow. He doesn't know how to imitate this type of ‘fun’. Crake never actually took pleasure in sleeping around, he just saw it as an efficient way to release his impulsive frustrations, onto someone who probably wouldn't badger him on maintaining a real relationship afterwards. Win-win situation. He loved his work more anyways.

_“Do you like your work more than me, Crake?”_

Oryx was sitting on his face, bent over so that his cock was in her mouth.

Crake made a noise that sounded like muffled laughter. Then he kisses her there, every inch of her was perfect, and she laughs because it tickles.

“Of course not, sweetheart. You _are_ my work,”

She would come after that and he held on for a little longer -but not too long, he was close, and then he was all over her mouth, some of him spattered on the sheets, some of him already swallowed down her throat. She never complained. She always gave him some chocolate or hard candy to suck on beforehand. She says it makes him taste sweeter that way. Crake says he can develop a pill for that. Oryx laughs and says that's going a bit overboard.

He's still thinking about her tight little body taking him to places he's never been before when a rough voice shakes him back into reality.

“Crake. _Crake_.” Jimmy protests in annoyance. “-Jesus fuck, are you seriously going to fall _asleep_ before I put it inside you…?!”

Crake blinks and he sees that they're both on the bed now, in nothing but their boxers. Jimmy's are dark grey and the elastic is hugging his waist a little too snugly, but he’s still maintained his figure for the most part so it wasn't that big of a deal. Plus, the underwear made his ass look fantastic.

Jimmy notices this -Crake's distracted, wandering eyes, and he smirks, getting on top of him, thighs pinned on either side of his torso. He does a few test runs, rolling his hips against Crake’s lap and takes a few liberties to slip his two forefingers in Crake’s mouth, all the way down to the joint, moving them slowly back and forth, in time with his thrusts, grinning when he sees Crake squeeze his eyes closed and groans softly, sucking them gently and hitching his hips involuntarily against Jimmy's.

It was obvious that Crake was giving himself up to him, for the first and last time in his life, and Jimmy had to admit -it was fucking _hot_.

He removes his fingers to place a soft, sweet kiss on Crake’s lips to reward him (as well as ease him into things…), and it's almost too sweet, even for him, he can tell, from the way Crake’s mouth curls in confusion and then trembles as he tries to hide the fact that he aches to be kissed like that again.

Even Oryx didn't kiss him like that. With her, there was always the lingering smell of sex and sly little mind games, the romance diluted to the point that Crake wasn't even sure if he could still taste it there. He told himself that the fact that she let him taste her was good enough. But it was never enough. And he didn't know how to tell her that.

Suddenly the friction against his hips is gone and Crake curses sharply when he feels Jimmy's warm jaw move down so deliberately against the black cotton of his boxers, which was already soaked, his tongue leaving hot, damp streaks as he smothers Crake’s barely clothed cock, with his  mouth. Crake feels more precum leak from his tip and he bites his lower lip as he clamps his thighs on either side of Jimmy's head, stringing his fingers through his hair and yanking up, the pain so, so good before he’d even taken all his clothes off.

“Ahh- _hh_ ….please... _m_ - _more_...” Crake breathes, begging, eyes wet, pulling his face even closer to his covered cock.

“Mmm, Crake...so eager…” Jimmy hums against him, moving his mouth to kiss the space right between his inner thigh and groin, he knows Crake must be sensitive there now, with his hard-on still pressed back painfully by his underwear.

Crake makes a noise that sounds almost like a whimper and he mumbles a messy “hurry”, then a “please” and then “fuck”, twice, and Jimmy laughs and smacks a hand across his crotch and Crake yelps in surprise and whines bitterly in protest as Jimmy continues to deliberately ignore his aching cock, repressing the desire to beg him to tear his pants off and fuck him mercilessly into the bed.

Then right when Crake is almost there, Jimmy slides off his boxers and grips the wet, swollen cock in his hand- the shock makes Crake hit the back of his head on the wall, wincing, and Jimmy smirks again, bending over him to rummage the drawer with his free hand and pulls out a couple ties, black, obviously. He wraps one tightly around Crake's wrists and ties the other end to the metal bar on the bed frame, all the while with his foot pressed firmly down on his trembling cock. He then steps off of his length and ties the stiff fabric near the base, tightly enough so that Crake wouldn't be able to cum. Crake looked at him like a wounded animal, straining to move his arms to touch himself as his cock looked like it was about to burst.

Jimmy grins, moving in to give the wobbling, restrained cock some more attention, kissing and sucking sloppily at the head and licking in careful, thorough strokes from the base to the tip and Crake’s humiliated cries gets cut off when Jimmy grips his slender thighs and hoists his body up, until only his head down to his upper back touches the bed and buries his face between Crake’s legs, spreading them wide as he applied his tongue generously around his twitching orifice -Crake lets out a couple weak mewls at this, and then as deep inside as he could make it go. Jimmy then spits into him and primes him further until the excess saliva spills out his entrance.

“You're so warm and soft in here…” Jimmy moaned, sucking with his tongue. “-can you imagine how _good_ my cock is going to feel inside you?”

“Nngh-- _nn_ , hah,” Crake just pleads in response. “- _ahn_ -nn, mmm, nn, _ahh_ …”

Jimmy removes his mouth with a wet pop and drives three fingers forcefully down into him, thrusting erratically in and out and Crake almost loses it at that point -the incredibly lewd squishing and squelching of his utterly wrecked ass making him go insane as his cock tightened, still unable to cum.

In a split second, Jimmy's fingers are out and he's thrust inside and Crake _feels_ it as his body is dropped back down again -he's being stretched wide, and when his cock hits that spot _right_ _there_ , Crake’s moans verge on desperate screams, hoarse and thick with saliva, as he aimlessly tries to strain his trembling hips higher so Jimmy can go even deeper, but his lower body is convulsing beyond his own control and his own thrusts are too weak compared to Jimmy's violent slamming ( _Fuck_ , _Crake_ - _you're_ _so_ _tight_ …) and he's in tears by the time Jimmy lifts him up by the thighs again, cock sliding out and when he pulls off the tie and watches Crake ejaculate all over his own face, he smirks as some of the sticky, white cum fell into his trembling, moaning mouth and Crake winces from the taste.

Jimmy suddenly grips Crake’s cock and he's barely able to choke out his words.

“Th-there's still m-more…” He whines. “-please l-let me come…”

Jimmy laughs and licks the cum off of Crake’s face and gives him a long, open-mouthed kiss until Crake has swallowed all of his own ejaculate. Then he places a sweet, innocent kiss on his lips as if the last fourteen minutes had never happened.

Jimmy moves to gently kiss the tip of Crake’s nose, then his forehead and then he suddenly shoves three fingers shamelessly, back into Crake's still wet, loose hole, soon followed by Crake's shaking, pleading voice ( _Ahnn_ , _nngh_ - _nn_ - _harder, ahn-nnn_ please... _fuck_ _me_ _harder_ …). At the last second, Jimmy slams his cock back inside him and Crake is gasping frantically and he comes hard in torrents as Jimmy finally releases him, crying from how good it felt, the pain sending him into shuddering fits of ecstasy .

Crake’s eyes roll back when his violent orgasm spreads across his entire cock, wincing in pleasure when Jimmy comes so much that most of it leaks out from his ass and when he keeps thrusting into him harder Crake manages to come even more from the aftershock. It's mind-blowing and Crake is still moaning, softly, breathless, as his body gently drifts from the seventh heaven back down to earth.

So this was paradise, Crake thought. It wasn't Paradise and yet, there was something unfathomably beautiful about its simple little mechanisms, in its raw, unadulterated impulses. It was crude and inelegant, this pleasure that he'd momentarily drowned in and yet, if Jimmy asked, Crake would gladly let him take him there again, more than let him, he'd pull Jimmy back onto the bed himself and fold his legs around his waist to bring them back into their sweet, but transient paradise.

The lights have dimmed now to mimic the dying daylight outside and a warm, muted glow blooms from the base of the walls, casting a gentle brightness akin to a hotel room. Crake relaxes on the bed as Jimmy falls beside him, looks at his face with that ever present smirk.

“So,” He chuckles. “-how was I for a first-time?”

“You weren't my first,” Crake scoffed, visibly cross.

Jimmy raises his eyebrows.

“You let Oryx do that to you too? Jeez, I never thought you were _that_ fucking kinky…”

“No…!” Crake dismissed. “-I meant that you-

“-I thought so,” Jimmy laughed. “-I know a virgin ass when I see one. You were so fucking tight, it was incredible,”

Jimmy bends over to kiss him again and Crake rolls away and his lips plant one on the back of his shoulder instead.

“Oh, come on,” Jimmy protests. “-at least let me kiss the owner of this beautiful, gorgeous ass…!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Crake snapped, moodily.

“Hey, hey, come on -you were right.” Jimmy tries again. “-it was a fantastic fuck. Hell, it was the best fuck I'd had in a ridiculously long time…”

“Can you _shut_ _up_ and be serious for once…?!” He griped.

Jimmy looked at him with a confused expression.

“What the hell is going on, Crake?”

Crake sighs, turns back around and looks at him, his green eyes, for the first time in his life, scared and vulnerable.

Crake breathed and waited for a while. Then he sighed.

“My head is so messed up right now. When you did those things to me, it felt really good. Incredibly good. Could we maybe do that again sometime…?” He asked quietly.

“Sheesh, fuck, of course…! God, Crake -you think way too much…” Jimmy sighs, picking a piece of dust from his hair.

He sneaks in a kiss on Crake’s lips and squeezes his eyes closed, preparing for aberration, but to his surprise, Crake kisses him back and then keeps kissing him again and again, each time longer and sweeter than before. Jimmy grins into the kiss and opens his mouth so they can taste each other and he almost goes for another round when Crake stops him, pushing him away.

“Stop-- _kissing_ \--me...” Crake protests in between his heated, feverish kisses, yanking his face closer, holding onto him with an almost childlike desperation.

“You’re-- one-- _to_ \-- _talk_ …” Jimmy managed to articulate between their lips locking together and then briefly drifting apart.

“Mmff,” Is all Crake can say as they tumble around on the bed, kissing each other with love, as real as it came, which meant it would last for a moment and be gone the next. But this moment stretched out a bit longer than they thought and when they finally broke apart from each other, Crake looked at him, his fresh green eyes still holding an almost unheard of adoration behind a layer of perplexity.

Jimmy smiled, brushing a few strands of hair away from his beautiful green eyes.

“Let's be in love with each other,” He chuckled. “-at least for one night,”

Crake kissed him softly again and sat up, rummaging through the drawer and took out a shiny golden object. Upon closer inspection, it was a watch -and an incredibly expensive one, but it had a blank face. It was broken.

“Here,”

“Thanks,” Jimmy chuckled. “-but how am I supposed to tell the time with this thing?”

“You don't need to,” Crake dismissed. “-I’ll give you an eternity. I've been working on it,”

“Really?” He laughed, good-naturedly. “-what is this next ingenious and complicated project called,”

“Paradise,” Crake said simply.

“Sounds perfect,”

“I hope it will be,”

Jimmy rolled onto his back and crawled under the covers of the bed. After the sex, his body had begun to get a bit chilly. He sighed as the warmth of the soft, heavy fabric folded around him like a snug tortilla wrap. Crake followed soon after.

Then Crake turned over to face him, holding his face in his trembling hands.

“Jimmy, no matter what, promise me one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Don't let me down.”

There was something so odd and final in those words, and yet they also felt so strangely familiar.

“What-

Crake interrupts him with some more gentle kisses and tells him he'll explain more in the morning.

So he shrugs it off.

Crake smiles and turns away from him.

“Have sweet dreams,” Jimmy whispered, kissing the curve of his ear.

Crake fell silent.

“I wish I could,”

“Shhh.” Jimmy murmured, trying to comfort him. “-I love you. I love you.”

“You don't mean that, you stupid corknut.” Crake muttered. “-you won't mean it tomorrow anyways.”

“That doesn't matter. We don't even really have tomorrow,” Jimmy looked past him, his eyes distant.

In that moment, he thought he could see all that would happen and the aftermath of the Paradise that Crake would build. And it was terrifying.

It made him sick down to his bones.

“I love you right now. I love you today,” Jimmy looked at him earnestly. “-and all we have is today,”

And that was the last thing Jimmy could say because afterwards, Crake closed his eyes and fell asleep. Jimmy sighed, wondering what the point of saying all these things was, when Crake didn't even care. Then his eyes widened when he felt a shift beneath the sheets. Crake had interlaced their fingers together.

They stayed like that for the rest of the night.

And Crake would never know for sure, but whenever he recounted that night he would swear that it was the only night he'd ever dreamed, and in colour too. Maybe Jimmy's kaleidoscopic imaginings traveled from his mind into his own, through their interconnected fingers. He had no way of knowing.

But that night he swore he dreamed of a forest. A green forest, the green so lush, fresh and verdant that his eternally clamorous mind fell silent. He was surrounded by trees that were a dozen feet wide and almost a thousand feet tall. The air was cool and windless with nothing but the distant cries of birds and the constant buzz of insects. He could hear wild oxen splashing in the nearby brooks.

When Crake looked upwards, while most of the sky was hidden by the innumerous branches of trees, (and they reminded him of the neural links in his brain, except they were covered in leaves), he could still see flashes of bright blue and it was clear, crisp and beyond beautiful.

Jimmy was there with him. So was Oryx. And they were all laughing together.

They had found paradise.

  
The End

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So clearly, I have a headcanon where Crake is really submissive during sex and basically acts completely different from his usual calm and composed self. And Jimmy obviously takes advantage of that lol.
> 
> Anyways that is the end of this story :3 Hope it was a nice read, it was fun to write :)
> 
> btw I have another story for this fandom (was actually originally an eng writing assignment but it turned out pretty well and I might be able to take it somewhere interesting) will post soon lol


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